With Blast, Balan the Boy, and Maa Inti Bangaaram, the Stree is ready to fight
byPunjab Host-
Tamil film Blast, Malayalam film Balan the Boy, and Telugu film Maa Inti Bangaraam all put women at the centre of the action, portraying protagonists who don't hesitate to throw a punch.
Tamil film Blast, Malayalam film Balan the Boy, and Telugu film Maa Inti Bangaraam all put women at the centre of the action, portraying protagonists who don't hesitate to throw a punch.
Three feature films released in the past weeks have seen women claim the space for action, a genre that has been defined and kept safe for men on screen. Tamil film Blast, Malayalam film Balan the Boy and Telugu film Maa Inti Bangaraam have female characters front and centre, where they do not bat an eyelid to kick, shoot or land a punch in order to protect themselves.
In Blast, Abhirami and Preity Mukundhan star as a formidable mother-daughter duo as part of a family of skilled karate practitioners. The film has all the mainstream masala elements of an actioner, but here the two women are the ones who lead the charge when the man of the house (Arjun) has to settle matters elsewhere. They are forced to unleash their lethal martial arts skills to protect their home against a ruthless corporate syndicate. Abhirami, at 42, drops kicks and punches in a saree, and even uses her pallu to snatch a weapon from the enemy’s hand. It is not over-the-top action- but a response to being seen as passive and timid, weak and easy.
A scene from Blast.
Meanwhile, the stakes are higher in Chidambaram’s brilliant Balan- The Boy. The deceptively sly drama sees Farzana Palathingal’s unnamed character yield a gun when necessary. If anyone comes close to her and her child, she will not waste a second in pulling the trigger. Although her methods are a far cry from being fair, the film invests in her womanhood: she is a product of a society where all the laws, rules and conditions favour only men. She changes her identity, hops on to a different name and runs away, not eager to please. Her only home at one point becomes at the guardianship of a wheelchair-bound old woman (Dolly June). She shows her how to use the gun, how to defend herself, and how to say- this is my land.
Finally, we come to Maa Inti Bangaaram, where Samantha Ruth Prabhu fills the frame with her fierce, confident stride. Her Swarna is introduced as the timid and happy-to-pease woman of the house who must win the family with her cooking and homemaking skills. But what did those skills did a woman any good? Samantha is fabulous in the scenes where her character takes down a bus filled with goons, effectively landing the punches and showing that she is enough by herself.
The poster for Maa Inti Bangaaram,
These three films place the female character in the forefront, and make way for her to take charge of her own fate without having to please the man. Her femininity is but a feature not her entire definition. Blast, Balan The Boy and Maa Inti Bangaaram are three distinct films with three distinct female characters- refreshing in their complexity. These women are fed up of being perceived as weak and scared. They are fed up of having to prove their worth only in homemaking, only in making sure the man is okay. That male and female filmmakers are both taking chances on the genre, subverting tropes of a male-dominated genre and refusing the spoon-feed the viewer is a wonderfully progressive sign for Indian cinema. Give the woman some space, please!
